Love Among the Ruins

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1. Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
2. Miles and miles
3. On the solitary pastures where our sheep
4. Half-asleep
5. Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop
6. As they crop—
7.  
8. Was the site once of a city great and gay,
9. (So they say)
10. Of our country's very capital, its prince
11. Ages since
12. Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
13. Peace or war.
14.  
15. Now—the country does not even boast a tree,
16. As you see,
17. To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
18. From the hills
19. Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
20. Into one)
21.  
22. Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
23. Up like fires
24. O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
25. Bounding all,
26. Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest,
27. Twelve abreast.
28.  
29. And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
30. Never was!
31. Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads
32. And embeds
33. Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
34. Stock or stone—
35.  
36. Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
37. Long ago;
38. Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
39. Struck them tame;
40. And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
41. Bought and sold.
42.  
43. Now,—the single little turret that remains
44. On the plains,
45. By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
46. Overscored,
47. While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
48. Through the chinks—
49.  
50. Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
51. Sprang sublime,
52. And a burning ring all round, the chariots traced
53. As they raced,
54. And the monarch and his minions and his dames
55. Viewed the games.
56.  
57. And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
58. Smiles to leave
59. To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
60. In such peace,
61. And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
62. Melt away—
63.  
64. That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
65. Waits me there
66. In the turret, whence the charioteers caught soul
67. For the goal,
68. When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
69. Till I come.
70.  
71. But he looked upon the city, every side,
72. Far and wide,
73. All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'
74. Colonnades,
75. All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then,
76. All the men!
77.  
78. When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
79. Either hand
80. On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
81. Of my face,
82. Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
83. Each on each.
84.  
85. In one year they sent a million fighters forth
86. South and north,
87. And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
88. As the sky,
89. Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
90. Gold, of course.
91.  
92. Oh, heart! oh, blood that freezes, blood that burns!
93. Earth's returns
94. For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
95. Shut them in,
96. With their triumphs and their glories and the rest.
97. Love is best!